Sundays
by dashia
Summary: And the lies, they role off her tongue, because she thinks of them as truths.


**Sundays**

They never went to church on Sundays.

She remembers spending long, drawn out mornings in the kitchen, sucking on hard pieces of candy, staring at the unfinished jig-saw puzzle on the table.

"It's a nice and quiet way to spend Sunday morning" her mother said. "And maybe you'll learn some concentrating skills, won't kill you."

She remembers the feeling of candy cutting the roof of her mouth, making the synthetic taste of raspberry get a very real taste of blood, and she wouldn't even bother trying to find the right pieces for the right places.

"Once in a while you can sit down and focus on something" her mother said. "It calms the mind."

She remembers the smell of grass in the summer, through the open window, and the feel of cold air against her cheek in the winter, like even nature wanted her to cut the silly puzzle-crap and go outside.

"It shows you're devoted, to be able to spend Sunday morning doing these things" her mother said. "And devotion will get you anywhere, remember that."

And once, she borrowed Wayne's hammer and smashed all the pieces into the places she had decided were right for them, and she had run outside, to avoid shouting at her mother. "And where did all those great qualities get you Mom, can you tell me that?!"

Concentration and focus and devotion got you a job as a waitress and a Wayne for a husband, apparently. Lovely.

(And Wayne found out about the hammer, but close your eyes and bite your lip and shut your ears, and my sweet child, that didn't happen.)

And the lies, they role off her tongue, because she thinks of them as truths.

But in the back of her head, a little voice asks: "How do you know they listen to Patsy Cline in Canada?" And of course, in retrospect, that little voice should have been more concerned with getting in a car with the nice, one-armed farmer, and the finger gun goes bang-bang and in that moment she knows what she'll have to do, and she'll be strong and do it, and come on, the bastard sold you out, mortgage? Fuck that mortgage!, but she isn't really a swearing kinda girl, and she's gonna be strong, but come on, the man has one arm, can you let a man with one arm and a hell of a mortgage burn to death by the side of the road?

And in the vault with the shouting and chaos and the terrified little manager, she can taste the blood in her mouth and the voice in her head has stopped whispering and is screaming at her "I hate what you have made me become!" and the bullets are fired and it shouldn't feel this good to shoot a person, but it does. Hope you bleed to death in a bank vault, Jason. Only good thing about you was your stubble. She's hard and though and gets away without remembering how, and when she sits on a bed later that night with the plane in her hand, it doesn't do anything for her other than remind her of who she used to be.

Somewhere in her mind, there lurks an analogy that goes something like: This is as stupid as a…but she can never quite finish, and she wonders, maybe it is because no-one has ever done anything this stupid before. And as she stands in front of the mirror and smoothes her dress down over her hips, she smiles like a woman in love does, and Monica smiles back at her, and Monica is a sweet girl who takes over, and is better than being in love than Kate ever was. Monica presses up against him after sex, snuggles him, kisses his chin and they smile in the dark, and they tell each other secrets and silly stuff, like people in love do, slick skin and his breath close to her face, and one time, Kate wants to tell a secret too, but Monica takes over, it's not the best idea. And thinking back, Kate thinks like this sometimes: but ha, I won, I drugged him and now we're both without him again.

Suck on that, Monica.

And the one you never thought you'd meet? The one you didn't know you'd met until it was too late? What she wants to tell him is this: I can take shit from anyone, but not from you, so will you please not give me any?

And she wants to kiss his chin in the dark and tell him her secrets, but she never does, she pulls her jeans over her hips, and turns away from him, and she never tells him her secrets the way she feels it should be done, in a bed in the dark with slick skin and tangled legs and smiles on their faces like teenagers in love, and there! he jumps, and there's a voice in her head that whispers: jump after him! What, Hurley can't watch the baby? but she sits

and sits

and sits

and Jack

is there, and well… if you use a hammer on a jig-saw puzzle it gets just as flat as if you found the right piece, a little something she remembers from her childhood.

And Jack is there. (And really, child, you could do a lot worse than Dr. Shepard. I mean, he's a doctor. And the way he looks in a suit? Well, it's not bad. Look at you, with a son and a Dr. Shepard by your side, it's like instant family & acceptance by society. )

And her son looks like her, she tells herself, and the lies, they role off her tongue because she thinks of them as truths, he looks like her. And the Australian mamacita (no, no one called her that, your memory is failing you), no, all the Australians on the plane were old and not very pretty, there weren't any cute, peppy ones there, no one that looked like her son, at least.

And she goes to the park and she has a fridge with a lady-bug on it and she has a Dr. Shepard in her bedroom, and he reads to her son, and he yells at her, and the voice in the back of her head tells her, very seriously now, that one of these days, he's going to kill her.

(He will, my sweet child, you know what a husband can do, you have seen the world, you have met these men, you have even slept with some of them, and either you get out, or you blow him up, or you shoot him, or he will kill you, and that is how it works.)

They never go to church on Sundays, still, and the last blood she tasted in her mouth wasn't even hers, and she wakes up at night and the only thought in her head is this: I should have jumped.


End file.
